The GitLab DevOps platform empowers 100,000+ organizations to deliver software faster and more efficiently. We are one of the world’s largest all-remote companies with 1,600+ team members and values that guide a culture where people embrace the belief that everyone can contribute.
Manager, Support Engineering (EMEA)
Job Grade
The Manager, Support Engineering is a grade 8 .
What you can expect in a Manager, Support Engineering role at GitLab:
As a Support Engineering Manager, you will be:
helping hire a team of Support Engineers who are focused on delivering world class technical support.
helping Support Engineers develop and nurture their skills and experience.
driving team members to be "managers of one".
building processes that enable team members to collaborate and execute.
holding regular 1:1s with all members on your team.
creating a sense of psychological safety on your team.
engaging with our customers to triage their issues via tickets and video conferencing.
creating, updating, or reviewing documentation changes based on customer interactions.
fostering an environment for the engineers on your team to maintain good ticket performance and satisfaction.
training Support Engineers to screen applicants and conduct technical interviews.
improving the customer experience in measurable and repeatable ways.
participating in escalation on-call rotation (limited to regional working hours during the week and weekend).
For more details, see our Support Manager Responsibilities page .
Projects you might work on:
Support Managers also work on things that will make your (and the lives of your coworkers) easier. Current and past Support team members have:
Created a tool to quickly analyze strace output
Built and maintained tooling to handle our call scheduling
Scripted a solution to capture the state of a customer’s server for easier troubleshooting
Added functionality to ChatOps to make it easier to identify user accounts on GitLab.com
Written a Chrome Extension to route downloads from Zendesk tickets into organized folders
… and more!
You should apply if:
You have an affinity for (and experience with) providing customer support, and making customers happy.
You have more than 2 years experience leading Support Engineering teams.
You’ve got advanced analytical and problem solving skills.
You’ve got a keen eye for forward thinking solutions (Kubernetes, Containers, etc.).
You enjoy solving many small problems per day.
You’ve got 5+ years of support experience.
Within the last 5 years, you have held a role at one company for at least 2 years.
You understand DevOps processes and you appreciate the value technologies like Serverless and Kubernetes bring to the software deployment and development process.
You’re able to communicate complex technical topics to customers and coworkers of varying technical skill level.
You’ve got extensive experience building and scaling teams.
You demonstrate excellent spoken and written English.
You’re experienced in creating and implementing new processes and procedures.
You’re experienced in writing support content.
You’ve got experience leading remote, distributed teams across geographies with a keen focus on employee development and the achievement of desired results.
You’ve got extensive experience in leading teams to take ownership and work to manage the entire issue lifecycle, from customer, to development team, to resolution.
You’re able to perform complex Linux System Administration tasks.
You’ve got experience with web application development using an MVC framework e.g. Rails (Ruby), Django (Python), Laravel (PHP).
You’ve got experience with Git and CI/CD.
Our values of collaboration, results, efficiency, diversity, iteration, and transparency resonate with you.
Performance Indicators
Support Management have the following job-family performance indicators.
Customer satisfaction with Support
Manage team within approved operating expenses
Service Level Agreement
Maintain hiring plan and capacity to achieve IC: Manager ratio
Develop a team of experts
Span of Control
Support Management roles have the following spans of control:
Support Managers: ~10 Intermediate and Senior Support Engineers
Senior Support Managers: ~3 Support Managers, 0-2 Staff Support Engineers, ~30 Support Engineers (indirectly)
What it’s like to work here at GitLab:
The culture here at GitLab is something we’re incredibly proud of. Because GitLabbers are currently located in over 51 different countries, you’ll spend your time collaborating with kind, talented, and motivated colleagues from across the globe. Some of the benefits you’ll be entitled to vary by the region or country you’re in. However, all GitLabbers are fully remote and receive a "no ask, must tell" paid-time-off policy, where we don’t count the number of days you take off annually. You can work incredibly flexible hours, enabled by our asynchronous approach to communication. We’ll also help you set up your home office environment , pay for your membership to a co-working space, and contribute to the travel costs associated with meeting other GitLab employees across the world.
Also, every year or so, we’ll invite you to our Contribute event .
Hiring Process
Candidates for this position can expect the hiring process to follow the order below. Please keep in mind that candidates can be declined from the position at any stage of the process. To learn more about someone who may be conducting the interview, find their job title on our team page .
All Candidates
Qualified candidates will be invited to schedule a 30min screening call with our Global Recruiters.
Selected candidates will receive a short questionnaire from our Global Recruiters
Next, candidates will move to interviews with Support team members:
Support Manager Candidates
Round 1:
60 Minute Peer Behavioral Interview (Panel)
90 Minute Technical Interview with a member of the Support team
The Tech Interview will involve live break-fix/bug-fix scenarios as well as customer scenarios. You will need to have access to a terminal with Bash or similar. You will also need to have an SSH key pair installed locally so you can connect to the server. Windows users must have ‘Git Bash for Windows’ installed prior to the call. If the Tech Interview is not passed, the Behavioral Interview will be canceled.
Round 2:
60 Minute Interview with the hiring manager for the role (a Senior Support Manager in that region).
60 Minute Interview with the VP of Customer Support.
Career Ladder
For more details on the engineering career ladders, please review the engineering career development handbook page.
About GitLab
GitLab Inc. is a company based on the GitLab open-source project. GitLab is a community project to which over 2,200 people worldwide have contributed. We are an active participant in this community, trying to serve its needs and lead by example. We have one vision : everyone can contribute to all digital content, and our mission is to change all creative work from read-only to read-write so that everyone can contribute.
We value results, transparency, sharing, freedom, efficiency, self-learning , frugality, collaboration, directness, kindness, diversity, inclusion and belonging, boring solutions, and quirkiness. If these values match your personality, work ethic, and personal goals, we encourage you to visit our primer to learn more. Open source is our culture, our way of life, our story, and what makes us truly unique.
Top 10 Reasons to Work for GitLab:
Mission : Everyone can contribute
Results : Fast growth , ambitious vision
Flexible Work Hours : Plan your day so you are there for other people & have time for personal interests
Transparency : Over 2,000 webpages in GitLab handbook , GitLab Unfiltered YouTube channel
Iteration : Empower people to be effective & have an impact , Merge Request rate , We dogfood our own product , Directly responsible individuals
Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging : A focus on gender parity , Team Member Resource Groups , other initiatives
Collaboration : Kindness , saying thanks , intentionally organize informal communication , no ego
Total Rewards : Competitive market rates for compensation , Equity compensation , global benefits (inclusive of office equipment)
Work/Life Harmony : Flexible workday , Friends and Family days
Remote Done Right : One of the world's largest all-remote companies , prolific inventor of remote best practices
See our culture page for more!
Work remotely from anywhere in the world. Curious to see what that looks like? Check out our remote manifesto and guides .
#LI-JM1
Country Hiring Guidelines: GitLab hires new team members in countries around the world. All of our roles are remote, however some roles may carry specific location-based eligibility requirements. Our Talent Acquisition team can help answer any questions about location after starting the recruiting process.